


Chicago Is So Two Years Ago

by reason_says



Category: World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Eventual Happy Ending, Injury Recovery, Kayfabe Compliant, Other, Partner Betrayal, Post-Canon Fix-It
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-03-08 16:20:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18898258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reason_says/pseuds/reason_says
Summary: On May 20th, 2017, Tommaso Ciampa betrayed his tag team partner, Johnny Gargano, and put him in the hospital. Nearly two years later, after their apparent reunion, Johnny returned the favor.At the two year mark, with Tommaso out indefinitely and Johnny as NXT champion, they've seemingly reconciled. But how?





	Chicago Is So Two Years Ago

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my attempt to reconcile NXT kayfabe with the blurred lines of the story they told us, filling in the gaps caused by injury and extremely strange narrative choices.
> 
> Just for clarity: this is entirely unrelated to my Swim Or Drown series, which worked within canon as I was presented at the time. In that context, Tommaso won the battle for Johnny's soul. In this new context, what does that battle even look like? They both have to figure it out.

_Johnny Wrestling_

“Mr. Ciampa, are you all right?”

_Johnny Wrestling…_

“Tommaso, can you--”

_Johnny Wres---_

“I don’t know if he can hear me. He’s not--”

Of course I can hear you, he wants to say, but he can’t quite make his mouth move. Every attempt to focus is interrupted by a new wave of pain, a new variation on what he’s been dealing with lately, and he’ll be damned if he admits to yet another weakness before he knows who might be nearby, maybe lurking just out of sight. Since he can’t trust himself to speak without crying out, there’s no point putting in the effort when all his attention should be focused on pushing away the pain, just like he’s been doing for months.

He manages a sneer, at least, and the person leaning over him lets out a sigh of relief.

“Can you sit up if I brace you?”

He grits his teeth before he nods, swallowing the grunt of effort that takes, and sits up with the trainer’s hand on his back. When he risks a glance to the side he’s startled to see the stands deserted - he’d assumed Johnny would stay to celebrate whatever it was he thought he’d accomplished, but apparently he’d already gotten what he wanted.

At his tag partner’s expense.

There’s no guarantee he isn’t still nearby to gloat, unless he’s left Candice to do his dirty work for him, but that’s not something Tommaso is prepared to deal with before he’s gotten an eval.

Despite himself, he can’t stop thinking about it. He shouldn’t, he should block it out, but how can he? Even as he’s steered towards the trainer’s office - too distracted to shake off the guiding hand he doesn’t need - he replays the match in his mind. No, not just the match; the last two years. There’s too much, he needs to take Goldy home and--

“Goldy!” He sits upright on the table, gritting his teeth through the sudden spike of pain down his arm. “Where’s my title?”

“Please!” The trainer - Tommaso has never bothered to learn any of their names, and doesn’t plan to start now - stands directly in front of him and is about to be knocked on his ass if he doesn’t either move or produce Goldy. “Ciampa, please lie down, we’re almost done. Mr. Regal said he’d take your title for safekeeping, we couldn’t leave it at ringside.”

That’s not good enough, he needs more reassurance than that, but stepping forward seems like a bad idea. He settles for leveling a cold stare at the trainer, who - to his credit - only flinches a little.

“I’ll tell you what’s going to happen. You’re going to go out there, get my title, and bring it back to me. I have no reason to leave, I want this taken care of more than you do, but I’m not lying down until Goldy is in my hands.”

Maybe the pain makes his voice sterner, maybe there’s something in his eyes, but the man actually turns and leaves. Well, at least being left laying by his turncoat partner hasn’t robbed him of all his own influence. He _is_ still the champion. Tommaso, true to his word, sits in a chair to await the return of the one thing he can still count on.

Funny, now that he thinks of it. He’d almost gotten to the point where he could have shared with someone again. Johnny had understood, had agreed that they were better together, had shared his victories. They’d even-- but none of it matters, so why is he thinking about that?

Johnny hadn’t wanted to team with him at all. Everything Tommaso thought was building back up between them had been a lie. For how long? Why had he agreed to Tommaso’s proposal only to end things like this? They could have had everything, and he threw it away.

When he had first turned on Johnny - oh yes, he knows that’s how people see it - it was spontaneous, but still with a definite goal. He wasn’t replaceable. He was going to prove, to the NXT Universe and to Johnny himself, that no one else could fill in for him, even in his absence. But more than that… he was going to prove to Johnny that his warnings about the hypocrisy of the audience were true.

Johnny hadn’t wanted to believe him; he had been certain that the speculation about a new partner after Tommaso’s injury had been well-intentioned. Jokes. A man’s career isn’t a joke. Jumping right to a replacement at the slightest inconvenience isn’t funny, and certainly isn’t what partners do if they care about their team.

So when he knew, when it was obvious during the match, that he wouldn’t be able to defend the titles even if they won, he did the only thing he could do. He tried his hardest anyway, and when the inevitable happened, he made himself irreplaceable.

And it had worked. Johnny hadn’t found another partner, even when he was finally able to return. Not only that, he hadn’t been able to capture another title without Tommaso by his side. Too focused on the fans, on proving Tommaso wrong, to realize that the truth had been staring him in the face all along.

He should have been grateful when Tommaso returned. He’d been adrift, with goals but no way to achieve them, and he should have welcomed the chance to fight for something he truly believed in, something more than chasing dreams because he thought he was owed a second wind.

Tommaso provided a target, stability, but Johnny could never understand what he was offering. It took so long for him to realize that Tommaso’s efforts weren’t about hating him, but about helping him improve. Helping him shun the hypocritical audience reactions and live for himself, for once. He’d finally seemed to take his future into his own hands when he attacked Aleister, but he’d still needed more convincing.

In the end, it had taken winning and losing a title to show him the truth of what Tommaso could give him.

Except… apparently it hadn’t. _Apparently_ , he’d been too stubborn even for that, if this stunt is anything to go by. Faking an injury is a new low, and exploiting Tommaso’s-- no, he isn’t going there.

Candice, though. By his side. The two of them bracketing Johnny, the way it used to be, and all for nothing. She never cared. She wasn’t even opposed to Johnny’s rise, it seems, because they must have planned it together, laughing behind his back at what a fool he was to think his careful improvement efforts were working. The way they’d stood over him, laughing… the ache in his chest can’t be related, it must be a new side-effect of his neck. Numbness in his hands transitioning to pain in his heart is a little worrisome, but he’ll have it checked out as soon as the trainer returns with Goldy.

Johnny, who’s always worn his heart on his sleeve, has apparently learned to use that reputation to manipulate. The man who presents himself as a pure fan-loving altar boy, relying on crowd reactions to bolster him during matches and crossing himself before shows, has chosen to leverage his veneer of sincerity to trick people into thinking whatever he wants them to think.

He’d given every indication of being swayed, of realizing that he was better at Tommaso’s side, following Tommaso’s lead. True, there had been times when he hadn’t seemed on board, but when Tommaso had redirected, he had followed. He couldn’t have won the North American Championship without following Tommaso’s lead, after all, even if Johnny didn’t want to realize it at the time.

No matter what he’s doing now, he has to live with that knowledge. He won and lost a title based on his attempts to live his own life independent from Tommaso, and then he threw away his chance for yet another title.

And for what? Revenge? Two-year-old revenge, when anyone with eyes could see how much he’d improved since he’d started following Tommaso’s lead? He’d taken Tommaso’s hand and followed him out, all but ignoring Candice’s concern, and all in the service of petty vengeance for attempts to improve his career. To play on Tommaso’s instincts, on feelings long-buried, and draw them out to capitalize on a lingering weakness.

He’d laughed, and Candice had laughed with him, and the crowd had cheered, and Tommaso wonders if Johnny understands that this is the same vicious hypocrisy they’ve displayed before. Cheering whatever makes them happy, regardless of whether it’s good for the people they supposedly support. Does Johnny realize he’s playing into their hands?

Tommaso had thought himself immune to that strange, parasitic relationship. Once he’d won the championship, once he’d built himself up by his own effort, he had the hook he needed and could ignore the audience entirely. Oh, there were a scattered ungrateful few who claimed Johnny had won him the title, but even Johnny understood - or so he’d thought - that it was Tommaso’s will and influence that led to his interference.

(How much of that was part of his strange plan? Could he really have intended Tommaso to win a title so he could eventually betray him and challenge him? Tommaso may never know.)

One way or another, he knew that every time Johnny saw him with the title, the two of them were linked in his mind, binding the championship with the concept of DIY reunited.

But more than unity, more than desperate aid, Goldy represents his strength of will. She’s no mere badge of honor, no bauble without weight behind it. Goldy serves as his cornerstone. With no need for friends in this company, and with his former partners still not on the same page at the time - or ever, he remembers with a stab to the gut - the NXT championship was and remains his witness, the proof of his own superiority and skill, and he cherishes it. The connection to Johnny notwithstanding, that guiding light shared and now extinguished, Goldy keeps him grounded.

And he’d left her behind.

When Johnny was hurt badly enough to leave the match, Tommaso had felt a panicked echo of their last match, two years ago. A glimmer of what Johnny must have felt. After so long, after all his work, after their training and their first victory, to have Johnny injured on his behalf felt like… he can’t articulate it. It should have felt like a tool being broken, but it hit closer. Not a tool at all, Johnny is more than that. Has always been more than that, no matter how transactionally Tommaso tried to present their arrangement. He isn’t looking forward to thinking about exactly what that means. Especially now.

As is, that unsettling feeling of something approaching concern had distracted him for the rest of the match, and even when he heard the three-count his focus was on Johnny.

He hadn’t had time to think about it in the moment, but now he can’t escape it. His concern wasn’t for the lost match, the lost opportunity. It was for Johnny himself, and he’d gone directly to him. Candice had gotten there first, and now he has an uneasy feeling that they were conspiring even in that moment, but when he’d laid Goldy on the ring apron and gone to help her get Johnny to the back, he hadn’t even thought about it. His choice had been natural.

And, clearly, wrong.

It wasn’t until they reached the top of the ramp that it hit him. He had nowhere forward from there. Caring about Johnny had been a mistake before and was a mistake again, all it would do is stifle him. All the effort he’d put in, his years-long attempt to help Johnny understand how to succeed, when he could have been striking out on his own. The greatest sports entertainer in the world doesn’t need a partner. He never did.

His whole childhood he’d heard jokes about his patron saint, doubting Thomas, who didn’t accept the truth until it was before his eyes and under his hands. Even after shunning the trappings, the association followed him and tore at every misunderstanding. Better to believe without seeing, to trust blindly, asking no evidence but the word of another. Is it such a bad thing to trust in yourself? To demand to see and touch the proof before accepting it?

It’s worked for him so far. Maybe Thomas was in the right. He certainly hadn’t realized the truth until he saw Johnny standing next to the Dusty Classic trophy and understood, in a burst of clarity, that teamwork could never be the answer.

His feelings for Johnny had lost him the match. His attempts to reunite with the man who had seemingly come around to his way of thinking had put him in an unwinnable position, and that had been his downfall. Of course he’d tried to discard Johnny at that point, what else could he have done? Throwing him into the lights had woken him up once, albeit over a process of years - maybe this time it would shock Tommaso himself out of his urge to reunite.

But then Johnny laughed. Braced his injured leg and laughed, and he had never wanted to team with Tommaso at all. All the effort, all the hints and guidance, all the whispered conversations during training and before promos… meaningless. Ineffectual and worthless, and Tommaso could do nothing but stare in mute betrayal as Johnny stepped back and laid him out.

It had meant nothing.

He’d opened himself up, he’d left his new lifeline behind to help his old one, and it had been for nothing. For lies.

Lying on the platform with Johnny and Candice’s laughter in his ears, with the crowd’s chants echoing long after they’d filed out, he stared at the ceiling and tried his best to push away the pain. In his neck, chest, stomach, in the heart he hadn’t been convinced he still had. All for nothing.

Johnny hadn’t been the one with his heart on his sleeve, after all. He’d been carefully guarded, tricking Tommaso into believing what he wanted to believe, seeing what he wanted to see, and Tommaso had made the critical mistake of believing him. Of caring.

What kind of person does that? As Tommaso sits staring at his hands, that’s what he keeps coming back to. Who reunites with a former partner, professes a shared goal, leads him on to reignite old feelings, only to exploit those feelings by tricking him? Tommaso has never felt as distantly as he acted, but he’d thought Johnny had understood that. The truth was for them alone, and Candice if she wanted to share. Not for mass consumption.

Manipulating him into revealing those feelings, not just to him but to the entire audience, was cruelty above and beyond what Tommaso had believed him capable of. Attacking Aleister had been common sense, a refocusing, and Tommaso had been proud of Johnny’s progress, but this…

And people _cheered_ him. Cheered and applauded and rewarded the betrayal, the potential ending of Tommaso’s career. As they had never cheered Tommaso, not since he started fighting for himself. Hypocrites and monsters, the lot of them. Johnny’s selfishness is palatable because it follows the lines they want to see, but Tommaso’s self-interest, oh no, that’s to be booed at all costs. Vile.

So after all this time, after he’d thought he’d found a partner he could trust and an audience that wanted their reunion, it turns out that once again Goldy is the only one at his side. Regardless of how he won the title, it’s the only thing he can count on, and he won’t betray it again.

As if reading his mind, there’s a light knock on the door and the trainer enters with Goldy. Except he’s not holding the title properly, he has it draped over one arm, and Tommaso reaches out irritably to remedy the disrespect. This title means more to him than any human ever could, especially now. Goldy won’t betray or leave him, and certainly won’t trick him. When he’s checked her over for damages - who knows what vindictiveness Johnny’s capable of, if he’s returned to form? - he follows up on his end of the bargain and lies back down on the examining table, Goldy at his side.

The evaluation takes longer than he’d expected, considering the symptoms aren’t exactly new. Numbness in the extremities; pain in the neck, head, and back; difficulty lifting, holding, or - at times - walking. He doesn’t mention the pain in his chest. That might be too much to deal with right now.

His range of motion has decreased dramatically, even from his last eval, and that’s cause for concern. He should be able to lift his arms higher. He should be able to turn his head farther before the screaming in his spine stops him. He can walk across the office, and hold Goldy to his chest, but can barely hold her with one hand or squeeze the grip tool.

Well, shit.

“Doctor Cordover--”

“No. No, I don’t want to hear it. I’m not going back there before this is settled.”

“Ciampa, you can barely move. You were injured before, but you really can’t put this off any longer. You might never be able to fight again!”

“You think I care? You think there’s anything more important than destroying him?” Tommaso wheels so he doesn’t have to see the man’s face, trying to take deep breaths. He’ll get in trouble if he attacks a trainer, he reminds himself. He’ll get suspended and won’t be able to fight anyway, so there’s no point antagonizing him. Even if he’s wrong and trying to undermine his career, and no, that thought is too much and he turns back around.

“Who the hell are you to tell me to go to Birmingham? You know how many times I’ve been there? How much I’ve been through already?”

“I know, and I wouldn’t say this if I didn’t--”

“No. Absolutely not. I’ll fight through this if I have to. He doesn’t win, you hear me? He doesn’t send me away to get fixed and win by default, I have to _fight_ him. If he wants to put me on the shelf, I’m not making it that easy.”

They stare at each other for a long moment, during which Tommaso wills himself to at least appear calm. Losing control doesn’t help him, even if his life is being stolen from under him and he has little to no say in whether or not he’s given the match he now desperately needs.

Because now that Johnny’s provided the final straw for his injury, knocking his block off to send him off for surgery and an indefinite recovery period, there’s no doubt what his next step will be. Even now, when so much he’d trusted in was a lie, Tommaso knows him too well to assume he would do anything else.

“Out of curiosity,” Tommaso asks, knowing the answer and hoping that, for the first time in his life, he’ll be wrong. “What took you so long when you were fetching Goldy? You said Regal had her.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry about that.” The trainer palms the back of his neck, then notices Tommaso’s pointed look and drops his hand. “I need you to promise not to shoot the messenger, here. OK? You asked.”

Oh, that bodes well. Tommaso gestures his agreement, even as the rage grows in the pit of his stomach. How dare he. How _dare_ he?

“It took Mr. Regal a while to secure the title, because after Johnny kicked you, he went back to the ring and picked it up. I wasn’t out there, but I hear he posed with it. You… I’m sorry to say this, but you might have a challenger at the worst possible time.”

Tommaso’s jaw is beginning to twitch with the effort of not destroying this office, and he stands up more abruptly than he should. “You’ll only have to be sorry if I lose. I’ve beaten him twice before, why would you think I couldn’t do it now?” Keeping his voice steady is costing him, but it’s worth it for the uneasy look he receives in return. “I’ve been working through this injury for too long to let it keep me from the biggest match of my career. I don’t care what you think you’ve found, Tommaso Ciampa doesn’t back down.”

“With all due respect, this isn’t just a bruise or a black eye you can shrug off! I’ve given you my best estimation, and it’s my duty to follow up with Hunter about this. I’m going to have to tell him I recommend surgery.”

No. Not that, not again. He’ll fight through this, no one can make him admit defeat before he’s satisfied that he’s done everything he possibly can. He waves a dismissive hand and leaves the office without a word, Goldy clutched to his chest, once more the only constant in his life.

So Johnny’s challenging him now. Of course he is. Of _course_. After everything they’ve been through-- No, he corrects himself. After every lie Johnny told him, making Tommaso believe they were reconciled, now he has his sights set on the title. Well, if it’s war Johnny wants, Tommaso will give it to him. He’s won before, and he’s not backing down now.


End file.
